“I wonder, Mr. Endor, if you can dine with us to-morrow at Number 10, just my wife and me? Nobody else, except perhaps, my daughter. But quite informal—just en famille. Afterwards over a cigar, we’ll have a little talk. Your fine speech ... it’s ... well, to-morrow evening, at eight.”
XXXI
AT eight o’clock the next evening, John Endor found himself in the prime minister’s drawing room, shaking hands with the prime minister’s lady.
The celebrated “Mrs. Wilber” was a tall, rather austere dame, with the remains of considerable good looks; moreover, they conferred upon her an air of intellectual distinction to which she was hardly entitled. Mrs. Wilber, it is true, had an almost sublime power of putting her foot in it; but this faculty in a prime minister’s lady may spring from one of two causes: she may have too many brains, or she may have too few. Slippery Sam’s greatest enemies had never accused his wife of having too many.
By no means brilliant herself, Mrs. Wilber profoundly distrusted scintillation in others. Her husband she regarded as good rather than brilliant; indeed, in her attitude to her lord, she was almost a latter-day equivalent of Mrs. Gladstone. She seemed to regard the prime minister as too bright and good for human nature’s daily food; in fact, a kind of composite of the librarian to the House of Lords and a certain highly distinguished personage in Heaven. To those best acquainted with the singularly complex character of the first minister of the Crown, this obsession of Mrs. Wilber’s was a source of pure joy.
John Endor was too elemental to give overmuch thought to the Mrs. Wilbers of life. All the same, he had humor enough to appreciate his hostess’ sovereign faculty of “putting her foot in it.” Dinner had hardly begun when she was openly rebuked by a clever, charming, unconventional young daughter seated opposite Mr. Endor, for announcing “that it gave her so much pleasure to find that gentlemen were still to be found in politics.”
“Really, mother!” Miss Clarice reproved her with the very latest Oxford inflection.
Mrs. Wilber shifted her ground a little, although maintaining the general position by asking after “dear Lady Elizabeth.” She herself claimed to be of solid Middleshire county stock; indeed, one of her father’s properties marched with Wyndham, and she was able to remember John’s own father being acclaimed as one of the best men to hounds of his generation.
“And I hear you are going to be married, Mr. Endor.”
Rather a blow this, to Miss Clarice, who brought her charming nose to the menu card before attacking a curry.